


Where The Light Once Was

by Caelucere



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Roadhog-centric, headcanon heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7880632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelucere/pseuds/Caelucere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries to forget, tries to leave the past where it belongs, but she's a walking reminder of everything that he's lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The Light Once Was

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a week and now that I've finally written this, it's not as good as it sounded in my head. The timeline was an absolute nightmare to try to piece together, and I wrote this all in one rush.  
> Still, have some angst! Have some liberal headcanons! Take it!

When they first arrive at Gibraltar, he doesn’t expect to see someone so young. This is decade on from the organisation’s official shutdown. By his estimations, all the former members should be, at the very youngest, in their late twenties or early thirties. The additional members drafted in for the recall bring down the average age somewhat – hell, the troublesome rodent of an arsonist that he calls a companion wasn’t even born during the first Omnic crisis – but they are all still adults. In their twenties, mostly, skilled and experienced people from across the globe.

That is not to say that the famous D.Va is neither skilled nor experienced, but it doesn’t change the fact that she is nineteen years old, that she is a surprising curveball he didn’t expect to see among the roster. He tells himself that it is no cause for concern, that she is a soldier just as much as the rest of them.

But in that first evening in the cafeteria, as he tries to slip food underneath his mask while beside him Junkrat demolishes the meal in front of him with the combined fervour of a whole pack of starved wolves, he turns his head to see her eyes staring at him. Not with fear, or even particular curiosity – the kind of tempered, analytical interest of someone who’s been through military training, assessing a potential threat and deciding to categorise it, the kind of gaze that a nineteen year old girl almost certainly shouldn’t have, shouldn’t _need_ to have.

The moment that Roadhog has turned to look at her, she abruptly begins to engage Mei in some discussion concerning her journals.

She shouldn’t have an effect on him, but she does, and it keeps him up all night.

* * *

 

He wasn’t her father, but from the moment he pulled his three-year-old niece out of the burning rubble that had been his sister’s house, he may as well have been.

Almost annoyingly, he remembers the scene in all of its horror with startling clarity. The time before, back before his world went up in flames, before his whole livelihood became one of thousands of casualties in the omnics’ war against mankind – he doesn’t remember that. Doesn’t remember the happy days, the carefree days. They feel distant, and try as he might he can’t grasp at them, but it’s the nightmare scenes of wanton destruction that waltz in as uninvited guests in the dead of the night.

He remembers that she was crying. That she had burns all down one side of her face. That she was clutching a charred plush pig in one hand and the fabric of his shirt in the other, wailing. That he was trying desperately to shush her so that the omnics wouldn’t hear them and riddle them with bullets, but he didn’t know how because he was eighteen years old and he wasn’t her father, had only just finished school, barely knew how to get himself out of Brisbane alive without having to care for a toddler as well. And every survival instinct screamed to leave her and run, but she clung to him so fiercely and he knew, he just knew, that he couldn’t abandon her and then claim that it was worth it.

 _We’ll head for the outback,_ he murmured, and her tears died down – he didn’t know if it was relief or exhaustion, or maybe dehydration, he didn’t know anything except that he was so totally out of his depth, that everything he was doing and saying was just an act of desperation – _less Omnics out there, it’ll be safe out there, just trust your ol’ uncle, he’ll keep you safe._

That silenced her. And in the midst of that suburb, reduced to rubble and ruin and burning as far as he could see, through smoke-stung eyes he looked into hers and saw trust.

It was terrifying, but it was what kept him going.

* * *

 

Six years on, the first Omnic crisis came to an end.

They heard it on the radio – barely any tech on the farm where they’d made their home, and that was just how they liked it. The radio didn’t try to murder them. You could count the population of their community on two hands. If the rain didn’t fall often enough, they were in trouble. If it fell too much, they were in trouble. But the memories of Brisbane burning, of staccato machine-gun fire and singed flesh, the memories that woke his nine-year-old niece screaming, that had him on constant alert in case their sanctuary was found – those memories made their shithole of an Outback home paradise by comparison.

Which was why when they were asked to leave by a man in a pressed suit, he tackled the asshole to the ground, tousled with him in the dust, seething, spitting, furious that they were being kicked out of their home because it was being given to the very monsters that had made them flee, why he closed his hands around the guy’s throat and kept them there until she pulled him away, why he didn’t even bother with an apology, why he felt every ounce of energy that had been consumed by fear and paranoia throughout the last six years of hell come surging back to him as roaring hot lava anger.

Which was why, when they were brought back to a shiny new reconstructed Brisbane, where the wreckage had been built over and swept under the rug by empty rhetoric about peace and co-operation, where she could barely leave the house because suddenly she felt like her burn scars were shameful, he refused to stay put.

Which was why he decided to fight.

He knew that it was the right thing to do. He was fighting for her, he was fighting for everyone that their government was turning a blind eye towards in order to make peace with the machines that had murdered their relatives. Support came in droves, the Australian Liberation Front grew, displaced people who had wanted nothing but to be left alone with their grief, counted as worth less than a bloodstained heap of scrap.

And they fought, they fought fierce battles, bitter battles, they smashed and they burned and they scrapped and instead of being quenched the anger grew, righteous, determined to win back the paradise that was stolen from them.

Mako saw her go from scared, to bitter, to furious. Saw her harden, although the light of innocence, the hope for a better future, still managed to shine through. Sometimes wondered if he should turn back, try to forge a new life, wondered if that was the best for her.

But he told himself it was for her, it was for the best, and that there was no point in looking back now, only forward.

He was mistaken, of course. The real point of no return was when the Omnium blew up.

* * *

 

She was fourteen years old when their paradise became an irradiated wasteland, when they became part of a nation of pariahs living in their own personal pocket of hell. Fourteen years old, but still her, still his niece, still had the same look of trust in her eyes as when she was three, only now it was reserved only for him. And even with any hope of getting back his life from before gone, he still had her. She still patched up his wounds when a brawl got too rough; procured a gas mask for him once his lungs started to fail; still called him Uncle Mako, still served as a reminder that even when everything had gone to shit, even when the future looked bleak as the dust bowl they were forced to salvage a life in, that there was something good that made his life worth the day-to-day struggle.

But nothing good ever lasted for long in Junkertown. She was aware of this, so she gave up on being good.

It was gradual, at first. Cynicism where she might have once sought for a bright side to look on. Still there, still by his side, but the light flickering out.

When she was fifteen, she insisted on accompanying him on salvage expeditions. Insisted on being armed, on helping him out, and despite his reluctance she asserted that she had to learn, and that if they were together they both stood a better chance of survival. The first time she killed she nearly cried, nearly threw up, but when she was sixteen he saw her decapitate a man and smile as she kicked at his head and watched it roll in the dust. It made his stomach turn, made him feel sick, made him want to fall to his knees and beg for his sunshine back, but by now their relationship was more of a pact of survival, she didn’t even call him Uncle anymore, he was Roadhog and she was Taipan and they forged on day after day no matter whose lives they had to take. He’d killed people himself, his hands were stained red, but he could hardly bear to see what he’d managed to make of her.

She was seventeen when she left him, ran off with some guy she met at a dive of a Junkertown bar and joined a juvenile gang. He’d always tried teaching her not to trust anyone but him. He told her that there was no such thing as a friend in the Outback, not anymore, only someone who hadn’t tried to kill you yet. But she ran away all the same, didn’t even say goodbye, disappeared in the dead of the night after robbing him blind.

Their paths crossed again and again as Mako became a makeshift kind of peacekeeper and she metamorphosed into a fully-fledged troublemaker. Her gang became ambitious, went from scavenging to mugging to raiding outskirt towns, on the ascendant, out of control, and the last time he saw her he all but begged her to stop because he sensed deep in his core that this could only be the rise before an inevitable fall.

He remembers well how she laughed at that. _“World’s gonna leave you behind at this rate, ol’ Hog.”_

She was nineteen years old when she died, when he found her corpse. The entire gang lay lifeless. Her machete was embedded in the chest of the very boy she’d run away with. The rock behind her head was stained with splatters of red. He still remembers the smell, it stuck to the back of his throat, acrid and thick and choking. Somebody had already looted the bodies before he’d arrived.

In the middle of the scene of carnage was a plastic bottle. Its lid lay a few feet away, the contents long spilled out and evaporated into the scorching Outback sun.

Once he’d done the maths, for what he thought would be the last time in his life, Mako Rutledge cried.

He’d never meant to give her this life. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve to be killed over a bottle of clean water.

* * *

 

Fifteen years later – or maybe sixteen, he’s not sure, he’s stopped keeping track – and he’s across the world. Dorado, Mexico. There’s a mission, and it’s important, but he’s staring death in the face and all of the details slip away into irrelevance as the horrible possibility that he could actually die right here, right now, seems to crush any significance they might once have had.

It was his stupid mistake. He’d hooked onto something and it sent him flying. He crashed into a wall, and the impact would have caused nothing but dizziness if the force didn’t send his mask skittering away, and now he’s on the ground, arms flailing and hands scrabbling desperately for a lifeline, as his irradiated, ruined lungs try and fail to keep him alive, each shaking and struggling breath floundering to help him. Dark spots dance in his vision, battling with blinding white until he can hardly see, and his hands are making contact with nothing but stone and his mind is whirring, screaming, filled with ringing and buzzing and what could be a scream.

He’s slipping. He’s going to die, and he’s going to die because his mask came off and he suffocated on the pavement. He isn’t even going to be killed in battle, but he’ll go out with a whimper of the most pathetic kind.

His mind feels like it’s disconnected from all of his senses and retreated into a torture of its own, and so it’s only with a hazy sort of numbness that he acknowledges two feet entering his field of vision, hears some exclamation of panic as though he was ten feet underwater, sees a white and purple blur darting around. A shadow descends and blocks it out. This is the end.

Except he breathes. He hears the telltale wheezing and his tattered lungs manage to actually do something with this filtered air. Oxygen floods in an overwhelming whoosh that almost makes him dizzy with its gratifying rush, like he’s been abruptly pulled back so fast it’s caused whiplash, but the realisation that he’s breathing, that he’s alive, wells into cool relief and gratitude.

It takes time, still, for every sense that was in the midst of shutting down for good to return to activity as normal, but he gradually comes around again, regains himself. Sight is the last sense to return to its regular state, and only once that had been restored does he actually see the face of his saviour.

Hana Song stares at him from behind the filthy glass panes of his gas mask, the same piercing russet brown eyes that lingered with him from the first time he saw them glance his way.

“Are you – are you okay?”

He reaches out a hand to pull the strap behind his face, her hand having been the only thing holding the mask in place. This time he knots it firmly, securely, before nodding.

A smile, soft but relieved, spreads out across her lips. It’s like rain after a drought. “Good. You had me worried there. I didn’t know you, uh – I thought it was just to hide your face.”

He doesn’t say anything. She hardly needs confirmation of the mask’s purpose, when she almost witnessed him gasp his way into hell. As he manages to pull himself to sitting upright, and their secluded cover spot finally stops swimming and becomes solid and stable again, she steps back and leans against the wall. Her hands are folded in front of her, like she doesn’t know what to do with them now, and he notices her biting her lip as she fumbles for something to say.

“It’s a, uh, cute mask.” She eventually blurts out, more out of a need to fill the increasingly awkward silence than anything else. “Did you make it?”

He shakes his head. Speaking is more difficult than usual, and his throat feels like it’s been stripped raw, but he forces out a vocal response. “Someone else did.” When she opens her mouth again, he cuts in before she can ask. “She’s dead now.”

Hana goes back to biting her lip after a quiet “oh.” Now that he’s as fully recovered as he’ll ever be, he finally examines her properly. The first thing his eyes are drawn to, largely due to its contrast from the candy colours of her suit, is the blood running down her leg. When he points at it, she giggles weakly, waving a dismissive hand.

“Oh, this? Just a light graze, nothing serious. Just thought I’d duck behind cover and wait until I can call another mech though. There’s still some Talon agents out there and I’d rather not go running and aggravate this more than I have to. All else aside, Mercy would kill me.” She laughs again. It’s definitely forced, but it still does seem to provide her with some comfort. Cold comfort at best, and her nervousness is betrayed by the fact that her grip on her pistol is so tight her knuckles must be white beneath her gloves, but it’s a comfort nonetheless. “And it’s a good thing that I did because otherwise – well, you know.”

They lapse into another excruciating silence. She’s nineteen, he thinks. _Nineteen._ What kind of strength must this girl have, if she can have blood gushing out of her leg in a zone swarming with agents who’ll kill her on the spot if given half the chance, and still manage to salvage something to be positive about?

He doesn’t say anything as he gets to his feet and reaches out to her. He pauses to gauge a reaction. Her brows knit in confusion, but when he jerks his head backwards she understands. Hana Song’s a soldier, so she doesn’t waste time by rejecting in order to be polite, she just simply nods and allows him to lift her up and place her on his shoulders.

Once he’s hoisted her up, however, he hears her giggle. This isn’t like her weak chuckling from before. He can hear the difference, girlish and youthful, and it breeds an unfamiliar, long-forgotten warmth inside him.

When he glances up at her, she stops. “Oh, I just thought – no, it’s really not that funny.”

He doesn’t move, only looks up at her expectantly, and once it’s clear that he won’t move until she elaborates the girl sighs in embarrassment.

“Okay, so it’s totally lame, but I thought – well, this is a piggy back, isn’t it?”

Silence.

“See, I told you it was la-“

Hana is cut off by a jolt as he begins to laugh. A low, rumbling laugh from deep within that he couldn’t have held back if he’d tried.

* * *

 

After he dumps her in front of Mercy, he leaves without a word. Tries to forget the whole incident. But his hopes are in vain, and that night his sleep is besieged by memories he tried to bury long ago.

The next day, at the debriefing, he and Junkrat are in their normal place at the back, the smaller Junker seeming more interested in an empty grenade shell than Winston’s report. Roadhog looks ahead, takes in every detail. This is a chance for a better life – not that it takes much to be better than Junkertown, mind, but this is a significant improvement nonetheless – and he’s determined to take it seriously.

That is until he’s distracted by an increasingly familiar pair of brown eyes. Shifting his gaze from the holographic projection, he notices her looking at him. Hana isn’t being subtle, but most of the rest of the room are too distracted to notice the look they share.

She smiles at him, a silent _“thank you”_.

The dam breaks, the memories he worked so hard to repress flood back in one gush of overpowering emotion, and he’s glad that the mask hides his face.


End file.
